The Lighthouse Built to Save Mariners’ Lives Helped Pioneer Sisters Stave Off Boredom with a Silly Game Before the Age of TikTok and Instagram

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Imagine being bored enough to test

Yourself against that lighthouse, flash . . . flash . . . flash

To see which sister might be fast and best

At washing dishes.  Maybe you will bash

Too hard and break or chip a dish or two.

You do not know in all this thinnest fun

That one of you will learn that she can strew

Out French, another be a beauty, one

Will sing in voice so lovely that the scene

Of heaven will be widened.  Then comes love,

And marriage, children, cancer—nothing’s clean

And so we play our games of push and shove.

  Our games don’t matter but they keep us back

    From horrors of our future and its thwack.

© Phillip Whidden